i have been searching for months on how to create my own maps for my dnd campaign and every time i found something promising, it was either just an asset or it costed a lot of money so i was super happy when i found this tutorial. it was very usefull and the result looks great thanks Leo Leonis.
This has opened me up to Gimp, didn't know it was a thing before this video. I'm having a blast spending hours upon hours creating new maps and trying out new things. This has enriched my life so very much and I can't thank you enough for this amazing content.
I might make a sci-fi world called Xanadu Wastelands, the third planet in the Hesal System. :) Might try and make a design of the six continents (Mursa, Pujania, etc). The planet has technology 15-30 years ahead of ours. For instance, most people on Xanadu had flying cars by 2015, smartphones in 1995, and an equivalent to a PlayStation 1 in 1974. My plots will mainly focus on the year 1909, 1950s and the early 2000s. Which would be like the 1930s, 1970s and a more futuristic version of the 2020s with a manned mission to the 4th planet, Hesalia. I'm rambling. Science, history and society are fascinating, and Xanadu would be a perfect laboratory for me to study social issues in sci-fi. Some of the plots will be based upon real scientific articles. 1909: Asteroid collision with New Spork City, Mursa. (Working on short plot) 1952-1955: Infection of Xanadu (Worked on sci-fi plot) 1982 and 1998: Photonic computer tech stolen by bad actors. 2012: Supersonic e-kerosene fuel cell electric plane changes aviation on Xanadu. 2015: Fusion technology pushback by NIMBYs. 2017-2020: Biofuel shortage for flying cars. 2025: Ozone depletion on Xanadu caused by excessive biodiesel consumption from 1900-2000 without proper emissions regulations.
another very fast way to do land masses is fill the canvas with noise, any texture, or render > plasma and then use color > threshold to create random land/ocean shapes. takes 5 minutes.
Thank you so much for this great tutorial! I'm creating a map for a fantasy story and the brushes + handdrawn continent outline is such a good combo for me.
Wirklich toll =) ich fange gerade an mich damit zu befassen. Ab und zu muss ich ne Pause machen, weil es wirklich viel Information ist ^^ Ich hab mir ein Paket mit einigen Texturen und Pinseln gekauft und bin noch am herausfinden wie ich die hunderte an Dateien in Gimp verwenden kann. Like und Abo hab ich mal dagelassen =)
Wow, your method here is great! I've been following along the steps and never thought I'd be able to draw a good looking map haha Thank you for sharing these tips!
Fantastic tutorial thank you. Can I ask.... which color palette did you use? Is it maybe Earth or Geyser? And also where did you get the background parchment jpg from? Thanks again.
I find this so cool! I'm watching it three years later and following the steps, as well as using some other techniques, to start my first world-building project! The only question I have is: How did you obtain a world projection grid? You mentioned searching for them as SVG files on the internet, but I haven't been able to find any! I'm also aware of the list of map projections (I'd like to use a Mollweide projection), but I can't find any file with an empty grid, only files of the real-world map with their respective projection systems. I've also been trying to figure out how to configure the projection grid in some other drawing program or in GIMP itself, but I haven't been successful. How did you get yours? I hope you could help! I am very thankful for your work and tutorial :). Best regards.
Do you think you could try this in medibang? Love your work and one of the very rare Eastern worlds created! Im trying to make a chinese fantasy world myself and seeing your work really inspires me to continue creating :)
Only thing i couldn't really do is biomes, the gradient either doesn't work at all or only paints the outer part of the continent and some islands off the coast
I created this one myself (because I needed a high-res version) by scanning a piece of textured paper and editing it in GIMP, but as suggested, you can find a lot of parchments via google or royalty-free image sites.
I dont understand what is going wrong Im stuck trying to make the path from the selection The path ends up with approximated curves and lots of jagged triangle edges and it looks really bad especially when stroking the path. Also, single pixels get 3 path points on 3 of 4 edges, making the path around them triangles instead of squares from the selection I used. (other larger shapes are also approximated as perfect triangles when making a path from selection, like it's trying to use as little path points as it can rather than being accurate) In this video your selection to path seems to make a pixel perfect path around the selection with 90-degree angles around the pixels. How do you do that? (Furthermore, you stroke the coast with an eraser and add details smaller than the pixels seemingly? I'm so confused...) Edit: (At exactly 21:00 you "create the path" but it's a jump cut to the path done and filled in with white and its perfect squares and blocky. How did you do that? The video literally skips it, that's not what my path looks like, nor does the path auto fill with color, was that something you did after making it?)
Mmh with what resolution are you working? I am not sure but it might be that trying a higher resolution might be helpful. A second idea would be that the issue is with your original selection - e.g. when selecting by color there are options such as antialiasing and feature edges that will fade out your selection, it will then still look you selected some definitive pixels but adjacent pixels might also be in the scope of the selection.
@@LeoLeonis hi bro, you still there why arent you doing videos anymore, i hope you are fine, can you do a comeback and return by creating a tutorial on how to do like this but for real world map, aka like chaneels kings and generals or historymarche
For the rust what type of rust did you use. I ask because when ever I try to select by colour there are about 50 different colours on the rust and it doesn't select what I want. All I get is just a bunch of small dots that are hard to see.
My proplem here is iam creating a full world map of my fantasy world, It contains three continents, and whenever i get to the biom part i cant use the tool because its make all the map at one biom or two, iam about to give up tbh
It's using the Stroke along Path function (introduced at 11:30), so you'd select a brush you like and then go to the path for your coastline > right click > stroke along path > and then you'd select the use brush as stroke option
@@LeoLeonis Great, thanks! Do you happen to have a link to the Winkle Tripel map you used? I can't find a HD one online that doesn't blur when I adjust it.
@@allureofdarkness Here you go: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winkel-Tripel-Projektion#/media/Datei:Tissot_indicatrix_world_map_Winkel_Tripel_proj.svg Make sure to download the svg version (you could use Inkscape to grab the projection only and import it as a path into GIMP)
Wow! Really nice work. It's a little fast-paced, but that's okay. The magic of video is that we can pause and go back. My one criticism is that the erratic zooming in and out is really distracting and difficult to watch. I Love this content, but perhaps try to be mindful of how you are zooming. Otherwise I really enjoyed it. You make it look like even I can do this stuff. I've played with Gimp a bit before, but never for something of this type. I have a couple world ideas I'd like to play with, so here is my chance :) Thanks much!
Hello, very good video! There is something I cannot do however in the "Map Projections" section of your video, I cannot find an svg file that has correct paths, the one from wikipedia have messed up svg paths when imported in gimp, can you tell me where you downloaded yours ? Thanks in advance, have a nice day too :)
Probably later this year - making this one was quite time-intensive so I want to get back to the worldbuilding for a bit before I make another tutorial, but it'll come :)
Hello, I don't understand why at 26.17 your bucket fills the whole layer whereas just before in the very same layer we used the bucket on the ocean BG to fill it in dark color. Why did the same operations have differents outcomes ?? I'm stuck there in the tutorial.
The key to understand these operations are two things: firstly, what is your current selection? If everything is selected, the bucket tool will fill the entire layer, if you select only a certain part of the layer (e.g. by creating a selection from your continent paths), then only this part will be affected by the filling tool. The second thing is the 'erase' layer mode - as you can see in the layer section I am using a layer with erase mode on top of all ocean layers and this layer's fill is determined by the continent shape selection, meaning it will erase everything on the ocean layers that should not spill over to the land areas (which makes this a handy choice when working with multiple layers where you do not want to constantly recreate your selection).
Hey, when I use turn my selection into a path it doesn't outline what I've drawn correctly. Is it because I'm drawing using a 1pixel size brush? It's square shaped too. This means when I use stroke path it doesn't really have the effect that I want it to, so I can't outline the coastlines like you do in the video.
Mmh, a bit difficult to say without seeing it myself. Have you tried it with larger sized brushes? And did you see the selection (the 'moving ants') before you turned it into a path?
@@LeoLeonis I haven’t tried yet, I was going to give that a go but when I realised I might have to trace the whole thing by hand with a different brush I just left it until I can be bothered hahah
I am sorry but I did not find your tutorial easy to follow at all. The part of the title that said free tools and referenced GIMP caught my eye because I had used GIMP years before but felt it had to steep a learning curve so I stopped trying to use it. At first you seemed to talk about wanting to make maps without having to learn a great deal about drawing -- and yes that is what I want to do --but you kinda lost me on the whole paths part and about the 3 different ways to make continents. You seem very talented and I appreciate your efforts, but for me this was too confusing.
I could grasp up to having one of the three methods on GIMP, but i cannot wrap around my head on the ocean part, it's like he starts speaking another language
@lucasvinicius7921 what he's saying is honestly really simple. All you need to do for the ocean is 𒋗𒌌𒈬𒌝𒅗𒇷𒄿𒉌𒅆𒀀𒈾𒊭𒋳𒉌𒅁𒉌𒋗𒈠𒀀𒈾𒀭𒂗𒍪 and it's really that simple! I hope that helps 😊!
An easy way would be to create a static map and then export a series of individual frames (where e.g. you move a border or so in each frame) and then create a gif from the exported frames, which can also be done with Gimp - if you would want to create more complex animations you could look into DaVince Resolve or After Effects :)
THE best GIMP map tutorial. Thanks man.
This is actually one of the better gimp tutorials I’ve seen and it goes right into an example project. It’s just so great.
i have been searching for months on how to create my own maps for my dnd campaign and every time i found something promising, it was either just an asset or it costed a lot of money so i was super happy when i found this tutorial. it was very usefull and the result looks great thanks Leo Leonis.
God i fucking LOVE this. I didnt know the paths were that important. Thanks for the knowledge!
This has opened me up to Gimp, didn't know it was a thing before this video. I'm having a blast spending hours upon hours creating new maps and trying out new things. This has enriched my life so very much and I can't thank you enough for this amazing content.
Ya know, this tutorial is what made me start my fantasy world! I'm SO thankful you made this. Keep going dude I love this stuff!
That's awesome, wish you a lot of fun creating!
I might make a sci-fi world called Xanadu Wastelands, the third planet in the Hesal System. :) Might try and make a design of the six continents (Mursa, Pujania, etc). The planet has technology 15-30 years ahead of ours. For instance, most people on Xanadu had flying cars by 2015, smartphones in 1995, and an equivalent to a PlayStation 1 in 1974. My plots will mainly focus on the year 1909, 1950s and the early 2000s. Which would be like the 1930s, 1970s and a more futuristic version of the 2020s with a manned mission to the 4th planet, Hesalia. I'm rambling. Science, history and society are fascinating, and Xanadu would be a perfect laboratory for me to study social issues in sci-fi. Some of the plots will be based upon real scientific articles.
1909: Asteroid collision with New Spork City, Mursa. (Working on short plot)
1952-1955: Infection of Xanadu (Worked on sci-fi plot)
1982 and 1998: Photonic computer tech stolen by bad actors.
2012: Supersonic e-kerosene fuel cell electric plane changes aviation on Xanadu.
2015: Fusion technology pushback by NIMBYs.
2017-2020: Biofuel shortage for flying cars.
2025: Ozone depletion on Xanadu caused by excessive biodiesel consumption from 1900-2000 without proper emissions regulations.
@@thatguyalex2835 that sounds super interesting actually!
@@pikahcheww He said: "Might" which probably meant he didn't. He probably got hyped from watching the video, then went back to Tiktok or something.
Found this off Reddit! Keep it up
Same
What Reddit page?? Sounds like I should be on it 😬
Carly Hendershot r/worldmaking I think
@@gaborangecloud r/worldbuilding ;)
@@jimmygagnon I searched but its private?
Found this on reddit, and it's super great!
Gem!! I love this tutorial so much, this inspired me on so many levels. I hope to see more of your work! :))
another very fast way to do land masses is fill the canvas with noise, any texture, or render > plasma and then use color > threshold to create random land/ocean shapes. takes 5 minutes.
Wow, so great. I wish there were more quality map making tutorials out there. Looking forward to your more advanced tutorials!
This is honestly the best tutorial on any subject I have ever come across.
Dude stop berating yourself, you're amazing at this! A fantastic artist and a talented map maker!
Man, you saved my day. Nice work. Best reddit post ever. Accept my thumbs up, directly from Brazil
This was exactly what I was looking for! Great video brotha! Thanks for the info!
I didn't mean to search this, but ended up loving it. You deserve more than just a thousand subs
Please make a detailed video too. This was very informative but additional aid will be so much more helpful!! thank you
One of the greatest GIMP mapping tutorials
This is amazing dude!
thank you so much! a tutorial of this level is usually held behind a paywall. you are a saint for uploading this for free.
You are a poor man’s hero. A modern day Robin Hood for mappers
Thank you so much for this great tutorial! I'm creating a map for a fantasy story and the brushes + handdrawn continent outline is such a good combo for me.
Found from your Reddit post, great vid!!!
Now, I want to paint a map. Super Video, pal.
Thank you! I subscribed a couple months back hopeful you'ddo a tutorial (and because I like listening to your world lore). Well done!
Thanks a lot!
This is AMAZING! The look is so unique! Can't wait to see your other videos!
Your concept sounds amazing
Gonna check out your world building playlists later
Thanks man, you've been a huge help
Nice work, I really look forward for your next videos !
thx man i worked allready with gimp but thx to u i get to know bit more
Instant subscribe, thank you so much!
Hey! Greetings from Brazil! This tutorial is amazing, thank you so mush for it!!!
Wirklich toll =) ich fange gerade an mich damit zu befassen. Ab und zu muss ich ne Pause machen, weil es wirklich viel Information ist ^^ Ich hab mir ein Paket mit einigen Texturen und Pinseln gekauft und bin noch am herausfinden wie ich die hunderte an Dateien in Gimp verwenden kann. Like und Abo hab ich mal dagelassen =)
This is SO good! Thank you so much!
Keep up the good work!
Wow, your method here is great! I've been following along the steps and never thought I'd be able to draw a good looking map haha
Thank you for sharing these tips!
amazing bro, super cool tutorial
This is a great tutorial!!
finally a tutorial that doesn't require 20000000000 dollars of programs
Thank you man , great work
What do you mean "note so great", man, you're amazing!! Super helpful and cool video
Thank you for the tutorial. It help me alot
This is very well done, and super informative. Great job man!
This is so good! That was an amazing tutorial you should be proud of this video! thanks a lot! 😁
Great video thanks. I have learnt a lot from this thank you very much
Amazing Job ! Thank you for all the detailed description ,it was very helpfull :)
very helpful mate.....thanks a lot
Amazing tutorial, Thank you
Great Work!!!
Dude this is fucking awesome! Thanks for the tutorial! As a complete beginner I was in desperate need for something like this!
OMG REALLY SMOOTH AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND TUTORIAL!!!!! ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT
Very helpful, thank you!
the fact this only has 1k like is a crime
incredible tutorial
hello from kazakhstan. thanks for tutorial
Where does everyone find such good quality old paper background😭
Just do a search for parchment texture :)
You specifically probably found it already, but maybe it can help others
Really neat stuff. Do you plan on doing a tutorial for the style of map you are using in your current project?
Yes! I kind of underestimated the effort a tutorial requires so I am gonna take a break from this for now but I will eventually get back to that :)
Thank you so much for the tutorial. This was great! I've had GIMP for a while now but I never knew it could be used for this!
Very welcome! Glad you enjoyed it! :)
amazing tutorial thanks (:
Great tutorial! I
Very nice!
Great video, thank you very much
Best of the Best tortional ever thanks a lot brother
This is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise!
Fantastic tutorial thank you. Can I ask.... which color palette did you use? Is it maybe Earth or Geyser? And also where did you get the background parchment jpg from? Thanks again.
Ojala pudiera tener al menos el 2% de tu potencial, son obras de arte totales!!
I find this so cool! I'm watching it three years later and following the steps, as well as using some other techniques, to start my first world-building project!
The only question I have is: How did you obtain a world projection grid? You mentioned searching for them as SVG files on the internet, but I haven't been able to find any! I'm also aware of the list of map projections (I'd like to use a Mollweide projection), but I can't find any file with an empty grid, only files of the real-world map with their respective projection systems.
I've also been trying to figure out how to configure the projection grid in some other drawing program or in GIMP itself, but I haven't been successful.
How did you get yours? I hope you could help! I am very thankful for your work and tutorial :).
Best regards.
Do you think you could try this in medibang? Love your work and one of the very rare Eastern worlds created! Im trying to make a chinese fantasy world myself and seeing your work really inspires me to continue creating :)
Only thing i couldn't really do is biomes, the gradient either doesn't work at all or only paints the outer part of the continent and some islands off the coast
A basic tutorial and you started with an already existing layer of pergament paper? Where did you get it from?
is there anyway to do duplicate like this 38:19 without creating another layer in photoshop?
Amazing work! May i ask you for the link of the parchment image?
I created this one myself (because I needed a high-res version) by scanning a piece of textured paper and editing it in GIMP, but as suggested, you can find a lot of parchments via google or royalty-free image sites.
where do u find that parchment texture?
I dont understand what is going wrong
Im stuck trying to make the path from the selection
The path ends up with approximated curves and lots of jagged triangle edges and it looks really bad especially when stroking the path.
Also, single pixels get 3 path points on 3 of 4 edges, making the path around them triangles instead of squares from the selection I used.
(other larger shapes are also approximated as perfect triangles when making a path from selection, like it's trying to use as little path points as it can rather than being accurate)
In this video your selection to path seems to make a pixel perfect path around the selection with 90-degree angles around the pixels. How do you do that? (Furthermore, you stroke the coast with an eraser and add details smaller than the pixels seemingly? I'm so confused...)
Edit: (At exactly 21:00 you "create the path" but it's a jump cut to the path done and filled in with white and its perfect squares and blocky. How did you do that? The video literally skips it, that's not what my path looks like, nor does the path auto fill with color, was that something you did after making it?)
Mmh with what resolution are you working? I am not sure but it might be that trying a higher resolution might be helpful. A second idea would be that the issue is with your original selection - e.g. when selecting by color there are options such as antialiasing and feature edges that will fade out your selection, it will then still look you selected some definitive pixels but adjacent pixels might also be in the scope of the selection.
@@LeoLeonis hi bro, you still there why arent you doing videos anymore, i hope you are fine, can you do a comeback and return by creating a tutorial on how to do like this but for real world map, aka like chaneels kings and generals or historymarche
my drawn out map paths are stuff in colored line even after doing add to selection and stroke path, it wouldn't turn to black lines.
26:30
HOW did you do that?
When I try to use my bucket fill a 🚫 appears! What do I do
For the rust what type of rust did you use. I ask because when ever I try to select by colour there are about 50 different colours on the rust and it doesn't select what I want. All I get is just a bunch of small dots that are hard to see.
At 19:55 you say to 'select the alpha channel of the layer and convert the selection to a mask' but you don't tell me how to do that :(
Wait don't worry I figured it out
BRAVO!
My proplem here is iam creating a full world map of my fantasy world, It contains three continents, and whenever i get to the biom part i cant use the tool because its make all the map at one biom or two, iam about to give up tbh
i dont find any SGV of map projection 😞
How did you place all the lines around the coast line at 30:20? I can't figure it out.
It's using the Stroke along Path function (introduced at 11:30), so you'd select a brush you like and then go to the path for your coastline > right click > stroke along path > and then you'd select the use brush as stroke option
@@LeoLeonis Great, thanks! Do you happen to have a link to the Winkle Tripel map you used? I can't find a HD one online that doesn't blur when I adjust it.
@@allureofdarkness Here you go: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winkel-Tripel-Projektion#/media/Datei:Tissot_indicatrix_world_map_Winkel_Tripel_proj.svg Make sure to download the svg version (you could use Inkscape to grab the projection only and import it as a path into GIMP)
bro how did u get the background for the layer in the first place.
Wow! Really nice work. It's a little fast-paced, but that's okay. The magic of video is that we can pause and go back. My one criticism is that the erratic zooming in and out is really distracting and difficult to watch. I Love this content, but perhaps try to be mindful of how you are zooming. Otherwise I really enjoyed it. You make it look like even I can do this stuff. I've played with Gimp a bit before, but never for something of this type. I have a couple world ideas I'd like to play with, so here is my chance :) Thanks much!
Where y take the al brush icons map?
Hello, very good video! There is something I cannot do however in the "Map Projections" section of your video, I cannot find an svg file that has correct paths, the one from wikipedia have messed up svg paths when imported in gimp, can you tell me where you downloaded yours ? Thanks in advance, have a nice day too :)
Where did you get the parchment tutorial png file?
Awesome
What’s the software or whatever your doing that on called?
bro where to find map projections?
When are you making a tutorial on your style of mapmaking?
Probably later this year - making this one was quite time-intensive so I want to get back to the worldbuilding for a bit before I make another tutorial, but it'll come :)
Hello,
I don't understand why at 26.17 your bucket fills the whole layer whereas just before in the very same layer we used the bucket on the ocean BG to fill it in dark color. Why did the same operations have differents outcomes ?? I'm stuck there in the tutorial.
The key to understand these operations are two things: firstly, what is your current selection? If everything is selected, the bucket tool will fill the entire layer, if you select only a certain part of the layer (e.g. by creating a selection from your continent paths), then only this part will be affected by the filling tool. The second thing is the 'erase' layer mode - as you can see in the layer section I am using a layer with erase mode on top of all ocean layers and this layer's fill is determined by the continent shape selection, meaning it will erase everything on the ocean layers that should not spill over to the land areas (which makes this a handy choice when working with multiple layers where you do not want to constantly recreate your selection).
I love it
Hey, when I use turn my selection into a path it doesn't outline what I've drawn correctly. Is it because I'm drawing using a 1pixel size brush? It's square shaped too. This means when I use stroke path it doesn't really have the effect that I want it to, so I can't outline the coastlines like you do in the video.
Mmh, a bit difficult to say without seeing it myself. Have you tried it with larger sized brushes? And did you see the selection (the 'moving ants') before you turned it into a path?
@@LeoLeonis I haven’t tried yet, I was going to give that a go but when I realised I might have to trace the whole thing by hand with a different brush I just left it until I can be bothered hahah
I am sorry but I did not find your tutorial easy to follow at all. The part of the title that said free tools and referenced GIMP caught my eye because I had used GIMP years before but felt it had to steep a learning curve so I stopped trying to use it. At first you seemed to talk about wanting to make maps without having to learn a great deal about drawing -- and yes that is what I want to do --but you kinda lost me on the whole paths part and about the 3 different ways to make continents. You seem very talented and I appreciate your efforts, but for me this was too confusing.
I could grasp up to having one of the three methods on GIMP, but i cannot wrap around my head on the ocean part, it's like he starts speaking another language
@lucasvinicius7921 what he's saying is honestly really simple. All you need to do for the ocean is 𒋗𒌌𒈬𒌝𒅗𒇷𒄿𒉌𒅆𒀀𒈾𒊭𒋳𒉌𒅁𒉌𒋗𒈠𒀀𒈾𒀭𒂗𒍪 and it's really that simple! I hope that helps 😊!
Do you have a tutorial on making city maps?
Unfortunately not, but I recommend to check out John Stevenson's work for some inspiration: www.artstation.com/johnstevenson
What version of GIMP are you using? I looks different from the one that is now offered.
Mine shouldn't be too far from the current one, sth post 2.10 :)
How do you animate your maps? I've been looking for a simple solution...
An easy way would be to create a static map and then export a series of individual frames (where e.g. you move a border or so in each frame) and then create a gif from the exported frames, which can also be done with Gimp - if you would want to create more complex animations you could look into DaVince Resolve or After Effects :)
@@LeoLeonis Great idea, thanks! Ooo I worked at an art school (in IT 😅) and DaVinci looked complex!
How do you add your background inside the continent? i have tried different methods but i can't figure it out.
Could you point me to a timestamp in the video so I have a better idea of what you mean?
In 23:01
@@LeoLeonis i figure it out, ty for fast reply
thank you